


Daddy Said Shoot

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Memories, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Game: Resident Evil 7, Gen, One Shot, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:54:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26073754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: Like everything else around her, the magnum's all too familiar to Zoe.As per usual, that's only so much of a good thing.
Relationships: Jack Baker & Zoe Baker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Daddy Said Shoot

.44 Auto Mag.

...Zoe’s never known dick about guns, but she knows a thing or two about this one in particular.

One of the finest handguns money can buy _(said Daddy)_. And that’s only barely - why, Lord knows how your Aunt Nicollette did it, even for a special occasion, managin’ to gift one of these to the family collection _(said Daddy)_. It’s a real _cowboy’s_ gun - Clint Eastwood himself made ‘em famous. _(Daddy pointed the gun out to her in one night of ol’ man’s-man classic movies. As Lucas nodded his head slowly next to her, pretending not to be half-asleep out of protest, having confided to her a few hours prior that he’d wanted to watch something scary, Daddy further namedropped a few books she’s since recognized the titles of on… some old shelf or another, somewhere in this big ol’ place.)_

She also knows how to shoot it.

Thanks to the very man trudgin’ at her through the halls, lookin’ too much like himself in the lights, and like a big shadow straight outta Lucas’s old favorites in between ‘em.

_(“Both hands, like that,” Daddy says, hands on her shoulders. “Now -- adjust your stance! Good leg back - that’s gonna be your right…”_

_The gun is heavy in Zoe’s tiny hands. Holding it out and straight is already making her arms shake, and it’s worse ‘cause of how much her heart is beating, as)_

She doesn’t wanna do this. She knows he’ll be fine, she’s seen it, but _she doesn’t wanna do this, please, God, Daddy, don’t make me._

_(she’s getting worried that she’ll drop it, and it’ll break, or go off by itself._

_Still, she nods her head, and)_

She moves her leg, and plants her weight.

_(she moves her leg, and plants her weight.)_

In one of those shafts of light, she sees Daddy grin.

It’s a _mean_ grin.

She’s seen it often, now, and it still looks wrong on his face. Moments flipbooked through her head wherein Daddy sure was mean - moments that were sharp and vivid now that she had cause not to repress ‘em, forgive ‘em, in favor of forgiving something else; reconciling it, and hunting and hunting and HUNTING for evidence by which to do so.

Daddy never took joy in having to be cruel. Cruelty, from him, followed from anger.

She swallows, tightly and witha tremble in her jaw, wonderin’ not-for-the-first-time what he understood what he was even doin’ as, when he was like this, doing these things, not out of anger.

 _Sayin’_ these things, not out of anger.

He nods up. “You know how your _mother_ feels about you messin’ around in that old house!” He even sounds nonchalant. Almost happy.

_(“Atta girl…!” he says, with a soft chuckle. “Just like that!”)_

“And that’s sayin’ _nothing_ of Evie!”

His pace toward her increases.

_(He puts his hands under her elbows._

_The shaking isn’t so bad.)_

She lifts the gun, looks down the barrel.

_(“You ready? Aim just a little bit lower.”)_

Lowers her aim, slightly.

_(“Yeah, like that…”)_

A click on her finger’s contact with the trigger.

“You gonna pull the trigger on your old man…?” he chuckles through that snarling smile and a chest full o’ bubbling grime.

_(“One…_

_Two…”)_

He hasn’t slowed.

He’s much too close, and she tears her eyes away, biting her teeth together.

_(Anticipation screams in her chest…!_

Bang -- _)_

**_Bang._ **

A wet splatter that sends a simultaneous feel like pouring sludge and the legs of many giant spiders seeping heavy and trembling down her back.

_(The target rips - a great big hole, and she whips her head to face Daddy, asking if he sees that, too - her heart races harder! Did she really do that…?)_

“Theeeeeere, ya go…!”

A footfall. Slower. Duller.

\-- He’s still close; her chest twists…!

She pulls her eyes back to three quarters of a face. Almost entirely covered in dark blood - mingled deep red and ink-black in swirling ropes, and pools diffusing together.

All of that grin is still on display.

 _(“Hm-my girl’s a regular sharp-_ shooter! _” Daddy says. He pats her on the back, and she beams. She hops once, the word_ really? _in the back of her throat, before, blood racing, she wiggles her weight into place again._

_She aims just a little lower than she first thinks she should, just like he said, and opts to prove it, to the both of them!_

_She braces herself)_

She braces herself - tears her eyes back away, twisting a _whimper_ out of herself with her wringin’ herself aside for just a little more distance, and shoots again.

The roar of another blast.

_(and with the roar of another blast that near knocks her right back, the target rips again._

_Her chest fills with a loud cheer that she keeps mostly to herself, instead looking at Daddy again to pass it on._

_He looks just as happy as her!_

_He chuckles,)_

“ _Nice_ one…!”

She doesn’t look, panic emitting one long growing piercing keening single scream of sound in her head at the fact that he is _still too close_ \- feeling clamminess and grime and the heat of blood on her skin.

“Nowwwww, is that all you GOT -- ?! Come on, _come ooooon_ , give us one **_more!_** ”

_(She shoots again.)_

She shoots again --

  
  
  
  


_(Suddenly, she is eighteen years old._

_The magnum is in her hands again - not aimed to shoot, but lyin’ flat on display._

_Feels weighty as ever, but a hundred times more beautiful, which is just as well, ‘cause it ain’t like she’s got any idea what she’s gonna do with it, besides as a keepsake._

_Daddy’s special, expensive cowboy gun from Aunt Nick._

_She looks up where Lucas looms over one shoulder. He’s obviously sulking, and she draws him a somewhat lopsided, toothy smile, gives him a forceless punch in the forearm. He scrunches his nose and returns the grin, but his eyes don’t screw up; he ain’t sure he means it._

_His jealous ass will get over it. He’s better at perkin’ himself up than he lets on._

_Some a’ the teasing mirth stays on, but gradually slips, as she then looks up at her other side, where Daddy looks over the other shoulder._

_Rests a hand on it, and her smile is suddenly maybe a tad sheepish. She returns to her little-girl brain, thinking with pride and desire to bounce with joy and hug herself tight at Daddy praising her gunmanship again, and her eighteen-year-old dignity is embarrassed at it, laughing fondly at it, tamping it down._

_And touched-ness tugs at her heart from below as Daddy puts his hand on that shoulder. A little motionless push-and-shake._

_“Happy birthday to my little Clint Eastwood, huh…?” he says, warm, with a softened form of the same kind of warmth she’d directed to Lucas. “...You’re growin’ into one cowboy-tough, sharp young girl…!”)_

  
  
  
  
  
  


The birdcage door creaks in front of the magnum. Closes with a sound like a distant _crash_.

Zoe’s movements are heavy.

Her thoughts are silent. Stone-cave.

She turns to the sink. She turns a knob with a statue’s fingers, a stiff wrist. The metal squeaks sharp. Pitching up.

Water splashes and spatters and gutters dull and weak.

Her forearms and chest are spattered with dark blood. She feels it, sticky yet still, on the skin of her face.

Every day, she feels so much older.

**Author's Note:**

> Written using the [One Word Prompts](https://towriteprompts.tumblr.com/onewordprompts) from towriteprompts @ Tumblr!
> 
> Word 1: "Bullet".


End file.
